Inauguration of Monroe
The 4th of March fell on a Sunday, and Monroe was the first President to be inaugurated on the 5th. Missouri was admitted conditionally, and, on August 10, the President proclaimed its admission as the twenty-fourth State amid a tempest of political excitement. The contest over the slavery question was now supposed to be forever settled. In the debates of 1821, the House stood firmly against Missouri's admission as a slave State, and the Senate was equally determined that the colored citizens of other States should be denied citizenship in Missouri if the people so desired. At last it came to a conference committee. It was decided that the State should be admitted, as soon as its Legislature would agree that the section of the Constitution Missouri admitted to Statehood in question should not be construed as authorizing a law excluding any citizens of other States from the immunities and privileges to which they were entitled under the Constitution. The Legislature of Missouri gave this pledge, but it remained open whether free negroes and mulattoes were citizens in other States, and whether they were to be made citizens in Missouri. In the admission of Missouri there was for the first time an unmixed issue on the question of a free government or a slave-holding government in the United States. Doubtful dealings on the part of the Senators from Indiana and Illinois were followed by an attempt to make these States both slave-holding States, in face of the binding law of the Ordinance of 1787. A popular movement led by Governor Edward Coles of Illinois defeated this project.
Liberia
On May 5, the territory of Liberia was secured on the west coast of Africa, and a colony was founded for the repatriation of negro slaves, with Junius Brutus Booth Monrovia for a capital. During this same period Junius Brutus Booth made his first appearance in America, as Richard III., at Richmond. Late in the year the remains of André, the British officer who was shot as a spy during the American Revolution, were placed on a British ship for interment in Westminster Abbey.
1822
GREEK independence was declared on January 27. After the fall of Ali Pasha in February, the Sultan was able to turn his undivided attention to the Greek revolt. In March, a body of Samian revolutionists landed in Chios and Greek independence declared incited the islanders to rise against the Turk. They laid siege to the citadel held by a Turkish garrison. Had the fleet of the Hydriotes helped them, they might have prevailed. As it was they rendered themselves a prey to the Turkish troops on the mainland. An army of nearly 10,000 Turks landed in Chios, and relieved the besieged garrison. Then the fanatical Moslems were let loose on the gentle inhabitants of the little island. Sack of Chios Thousands were put to the sword. The slave markets of Northern Africa were glutted with Chian women and children. Within a month the once lovely island was a ruined waste. All Greece and Europe was filled with horror. Maurokordatos, now at the head of Greek affairs, was bitterly blamed for not sending over a fleet to save Chios. One single Greek took it into his hands to avenge his countrymen. The Turks were celebrating their sacred month of Ramazan. On the night of June 18, the festival of Biram, the Turkish fleet, under command of Kara Ali, was illuminated with colored Kanaris' exploit lanterns. On that night Constantine Kanaris, a sea-captain from Psara, drove a fire-ship into the midst of the Turkish fleet. Sailing close up to the admiral's flagship he thrust his bowsprit into one of the portholes. Then setting fire to the pitch and resin on board his ship, he dropped into his small boat and pulled away. A breeze fanned the flames, and in a moment the big Turkish man-of-war was afire. The powder magazine blew up and the lifeboats went up in flames. The burning rigging fell down upon the doomed crew, and the admiral was struck down on his poop-deck. The ship was burned to the water's edge. The Turkish fleet scattered before the shower of blazing sparks, and was only brought together under the guns of the Dardanelles. This exploit made Kanaris the hero of Greece. Within the same year he repeated the feat.
The Sultan had thrown his whole land force into the Greek mainland. Morea reinvaded Khurshid, after his defeat of Ali Pasha, marched to Larissa, in Thessaly. Thence two armies, 50,000 strong, under Bramali and Homer Brionis converged upon the Morea. In the face of so formidable an invasion, Maurokordatos took the field himself. He mismanaged things badly. At Arta he sacrificed End of Philhellene corps his choicest regiment, the famous corps of Philhellenes, composed of foreign officers and commanded by men who had won distinction in Napoleon's campaigns. They were cut down almost to a man. Maurokordatos fell back to Missolonghi. In the meanwhile Dramalis with 25,000 foot and 6,000 horse penetrated into the Morea. The Greek Government at Argos dispersed. All would have been lost for the Greeks had Dramalis not neglected to cover the mountain passes behind him. While he marched on to Nauplia, the Greek mountaineers rose behind him. Demetrios Ypsilanti, the acting-president of Defence of Argos Greece, with a few hundred followers threw himself into Argos. There he held the Acropolis against the Turkish rearguard. Kolokotrones, calling out the last men from Tripolitza, relieved Ypsilanti at Argos. The mountain passage was seized. Dramalis had to give up his conquest of the Morea, and fight his way back to the Isthmus of Corinth. Without supplies and harassed Turks demoralized by hostile peasant forces the Turkish army became badly demoralized. Thousands were lost on the way. Dramalis himself died from over-exposure. The remainder of his army melted away at Corinth under the combined effects of sickness and drought.
A decisive turn in the Greek war for independence was reached. Europe realized that the revolt had grown to the proportions of a national war. Popular sympathy in Russia became more clamorous. Capodistrias, the Russian Capodistrias resigns Prime Minister, rightly measured the force of this long pent-up feeling. Unable to move the Czar, who still floundered in the toils of the Holy Alliance, Capodistrias withdrew from public affairs and retired to Geneva.
In England, the suicide of Castlereagh brought Canning once more into prominence. Robert Peel Suicide of Castlereaghwas made Home Secretary. Canning's long retirement after the fiasco of his American policy, and his breach with Castlereagh, had served to chasten this statesman. As leader of the opposition, he had learned to reckon with the forces of popular feeling. When he returned to Canning power in 1822, he was no longer an ultra-conservative, but a liberal. He now made no disguise of his sympathies with the cause of Greece, and with the struggle for independence in South and Central America. There the course of freedom had gathered so much momentum that it was plain to all that Spain could never prevail without help from others. In Mexico, upon Iturbide Emperor of Mexico the refusal of Ferdinand VII. to accept the separate crown of Mexico, General Iturbide proclaimed himself emperor. On May 19, he assumed the dignity. As Augustine I., he was crowned in the Cathedral of Mexico in July. At the same time San Martin and Bolivar met at Guayaquil to dispose of the destinies of South America. San Martin had just succeeded in liberating Peru, and had made his triumphal entry into Lima. Bolivar had brought aid to Ecuador, and established independence there. José de Sucre, Battle of Pichincha whom Bolivar called the "soul of his army," defeated the Spaniards in the famous battle of Pichincha, fought at a height of 10,200 feet above the sea. When Bolivar and San Martin met on July 25, San Martin announced his determination to give a free field to Bolivar. The two men parted at a great public love-feast at which San Martin toasted Bolivar as the "liberator of Colombia." In his farewell address he said: "The presence of a fortunate general in the country which he has conquered is detrimental to San Martin retires the state. I have won the independence of Peru, and I now cease to be a public man." Speaking privately of Bolivar, he said: "He is the most extraordinary character of South America; one to whom difficulties but add strength." With his daughter Mercedes, San Martin retired to Europe, to Battle of Junin dwell there in obscurity and poverty. Bolivar, with Generals Sucre, Miller and Cordova, assembled a great liberating army at Juarez. After a preliminary victory at Junin, Bolivar returned to Lima to assume the reigns of government, while his generals pushed on against the forces of the Ayacucho Spanish viceroy. Late in the year a decisive battle was fought at Ayacucho. The revolutionists charged down the mountain ridges upon the Spaniards in the plain, and utterly routed them. The viceroy himself was wounded, with 700 of his men, while 1,400 Spaniards were killed outright. In these casualties the unusual disparity between killed and wounded reveals the unsparing ferocity of the fight. In Brazil a peaceful revolution was Independence of Brazil effected in September. After the return of Juan VI. to Portugal his son Dom Pedro reigned as regent. On September 7, he yielded to the demands of his American subjects, and proclaimed the independence of Brazil. He was declared constitutional emperor of Brazil on October 12, and was crowned as such shortly afterward at Rio Janeiro.